NEW YORK — Flights resumed, but slowly. The New York Stock Exchange got back to business, but on generator power. With the subways still down, great numbers of people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan in a reverse of the exodus of 9/11.

Two days after Superstorm Sandy rampaged across the Northeast, killing at least 72 people, New York struggled Wednesday to find its way.

As far west as Wisconsin and south to the Carolinas, more than 6 million homes and businesses were still without power, including about 650,000 in New York City, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Along the coast, rescue officials confronted flooded cities and battered beach towns that remained dangerous and chaotic, particularly in pockets of hard-hit New Jersey.

At New York luxury hotels and drugstores and Starbucks shops that bubbled back to life, people clustered around outlets and electrical strips, desperate to recharge their phones. In the Meatpacking District of Manhattan, a line of people filled pails with water from a fire hydrant.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that parts of the subway would begin running Thursday. Three of seven tunnels under the East River had been pumped free of water, removing a major obstacle to restoring full service.

"We are going to need some patience and some tolerance," he said.

On Wednesday, both were frayed. Bus service was free but delayed. New Yorkers jammed on, crowding buses so heavily that they skipped stops and rolled past waiting passengers.

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New York City buses serve 2.3 million people on an average day. Two days after the storm, they were trying to handle many of the 5.5 million daily subway riders, too.

Bloomberg canceled school the rest of the week. The Brooklyn Nets, who just moved from New Jersey, scratched their home opener Thursday.

Still, there were signs that New York was flickering back to life. Flights resumed at Kennedy and Newark airports on what authorities described as a very limited schedule. Nothing was taking off or landing at LaGuardia, which suffered far worse damage. Amtrak said trains will start running in and out of New York on Friday.

The stock exchange, operating on backup generators, came back to life after its first two-day weather shutdown since the blizzard of 1888. Bloomberg rang the opening bell to whoops from traders below.

"We jokingly said this morning we may be the only building south of midtown that has water, lights and food," said Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of the company that runs the exchange, in lower Manhattan.

Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, National Guardsmen in trucks delivered ready-to-eat meals and other supplies to heavily flooded Hoboken. Large portions of the old factory city were flooded, and pumps were working round-the-clock to clear a toxic and potentially deadly mix of more than 500 gallons of water, oil and sewage.

Guard troops in 2.5-ton Humvees patrolled the flooded streets, seeking to evacuate the most vulnerable of the city's 20,000 stranded residents, nearly half of Hoboken's population, who were told to stay inside and signal for help with pillowcases.

Mayor Dawn Zimmer stood in the gathering darkness Wednesday afternoon and begged the outside world to speed more supplies, such as flashlights, batteries, food, generator fuel and drinking water.

"We ask anyone who's listening to deliver supplies to us," she said from the steps of City Hall, which was without power.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama took a helicopter tour of the ravaged coast with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — houses split open by floodwaters and the ruins of a roller coaster that had come unmoored from a shattered pier in Seaside Heights, N.J., and washed into the ocean.

"We are here for you," Obama said in Brigantine, N.J. "We are not going to tolerate red tape. We are not going to tolerate bureaucracy."

The Washington Post contributed to this report.

An aerial photo shows the Breezy Point neighborhood in New York City borough of Queens on Wednesday. About 100 homes burned to the ground in the close-knit community as a result of superstorm Sandy. (Mark Lennihan, The Associated Press)

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